The United States Patent Application of James Hillier, Ser. No. 597,371, filed on July 18, 1975, and now U.S. Pat. No. 4,030,138, (as well as a counterpart British patent application No. 28054/76, filed July 6, 1976), discloses a disc record handling system. As disclosed in the aforementioned Hillier application, which is also assigned to the assignee of the instant application, a pair of finger holes are provided in the unrecorded label area of the record. The package used for shipping and storing the record is provided with a well for receiving the record. The spacing between the edge of the well and the outer periphery of the record is such that the outer periphery of the record is not directly accessible, thereby constraining the consumer to handling the disc by the finger holes. The package is provided with a finger cavity located underneath the finger holes to facilitate grasping of the record for removal from the package. Reference may be made to the Canadian Design Pat. No. 40,524 for an illustration of a preferred design of such finger holes for handling records.
In the aforementioned systems, it is desirable to prevent rotation of the record relative to the top and bottom of the package and, in the case of multiple record packages, it is advantageous to prevent rotation of records relative to each other. This is so because such rotation creates a scruffing condition on the surfaces of the records which detracts from their appearance, and also generates debris which could result in loss of signal during playback. The problem is particularly important in the case of video discs since video disc grooves are relatively fragile (e.g., groove depth 1 micrometer, groove pitch 4.5 micrometers), and since video disc signal elements are relatively small (e.g., signal element length 0.3 to 0.8 micrometer, signal element depth 0.10 micrometer).